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Giant fireball streaks over Spain 'turning night into day'

Fiona Govan
Fiona Govan - [email protected]
Giant fireball streaks over Spain 'turning night into day'
Stock photo of a meteorite over Spain. Screenshot from Meteors YouTube channel.

A fireball that shone ten times brighter than the moon was spotted at 4.26am on Thursday and captured on video from La Hita Observatory in Toledo.

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Described as an "especially spectacular" display, the meterorite could be seen hitting the Earth’s atmosphere from Madrid, Castilla-La Mancha, Valencia, Murcia and Andalucia.

José María Mateido, an astrophysist on Spain’s SMART (Spectroscopy of Meteoroids in the Atmosphere by means of Robotic Technologies) project, a collaboration between Spanish observatories described the fireball as "amazing".

The Huelva university professor explained that the meteorite - rock from a comet -  likely had a mass of around 30kg gave out the extraordinarily bright light when it hit Earth’s atmosphere at around 90,000km per hour.

"This amazing fireball turned the night into day for a fraction of a second."

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